Canvas Simplifies Digital Business Process Transformations

When it comes to digital business transformation, many organizations have grand ambitions. But on a practical level, most of them struggle with simply replacing a paper-based process with a mobile application. To make that simpler, Canvas created a namesake workflow application hosted in the cloud that is designed to enable end users to automate a paper-based process without any intervention on the part of the internal IT organization or a third-party developer required.

The latest version of Canvas sports an entirely new user interface based on the Human Interface guidelines created by Apple for iOS devices, and adds connections to a catalog created by Zapier that houses more than 20,000 templates for creating mobile forms. With this release, Canvas now also includes tools for generating analytics and reports in real time.

Canvas CEO James Quigley says that as far as digital business transformations are concerned, most organizations are simply trying to get closer to their customers in a way that eliminates paper-based processes using a mobile application.

“Most organizations want to be able to collect data digitally and then share that data with other applications,” says Quigley.

The challenge they face is that most approaches to this goal require organizations to hire mobile application developers or contract an IT services firm. In contrast, Quigley says Canvas 8 provides end users with a tool that allows them to employ a drag-and-drop interface to automate most common paper-based processes using a platform hosted by Canvas in the cloud that is integrated with most popular mobile computing devices, says Quigley. The latest version of Canvas makes use of UI guidelines developed by Apple; in the future, Quigley says, Canvas will also apply those same UI concepts to other platforms.

Of course, the end goal should not be to simply move a paper-based process on to a mobile computing device. Quigley notes that in an age when mass customization of software is now possible, organizations can optimize processes in ways never before possible using paper-based forms. For example, Quigley says that most mobile devices include cameras that make it simple to capture an image. None of that business process innovation, however, is going to occur as long as the forms used to run the business continue to come from trees.